Known in the art are metal-cutting machines (cf., e.g., USSR Inventor's Certificate No. 240,140), whose base mounts the table for clamping the workpiece being machined thereon, and longitudinal ways wherein the main carriage is mounted, provided with cross-ways for the cross-slide to traverse therealong, said cross-slide carrying the power head with the cutting tool. Both the main carriage and the cross-slide have each its own drive controlled from a program-copying device.
In such machines both the longitudinal and transverse ways are V-shaped, and are provided with balls enclosed in cages, which balls are fitted between the V-strips of each pair of the ways.
Initial loading of such ways is attained by appropriately forcing down one of the V-strips by means of adjusting screws.
A cardinal disadvantage inherent in said metal-cutting machines resides in the fact that such V-ways are intricately-shaped and features too large a length as compared to the cross-sectional area thereof, whereas the manufacturing accuracy of said V-ways, as well as the hardness of their surfaces contacting the balls, should be adequately high.
Besides, fitting faces must be provided on the base and carriage of a metal-cutting machine for mounting V-ways thereon said fitting faces being likewise imposed with high requirements as to the accuracy of their manufacture and mutual position, which in a majority of cases is attainable by resorting to mechanical fitting jobs.
All the afore-said disadvantages from which suffer V-shaped ways account for high labor consumption involved in their manufacture and, consequently, in the manufacture of a metal-cutting machine as a whole.